By Rachel Morarjee
Financial Times 20 March 2006
Officials in one of Afghanistan's main opium-growing provinces are fighting for credibility after millions of dollars of promised international aid to fund alternative livelihood programmes failed to materialise.
"We were promised help and we told the farmers there would be good seeds, fertilisers and public works projects, but nothing happened and now there is no belief in the government," General Shah Jahan Noori, the provincial police chief in Badakhshan, in the country's remote north-east, told the Financial Times.
As one of Afghanistan's main opium-growing and heroin-processing areas, Badakhshan was one of the provinces prioritised for alternative livelihood proj-ects in 2005, along with the eastern Nangahar province and southern Helmand province, where British troops will be stationed.
After local officials assured poppy farmers there would be aid and compensation, the province saw an almost 50 per cent drop in the number of hectares of opium grown in 2005.
Overall, Afghanistan saw a 20 per cent drop in the area used to grow poppies in 2005, but a recent survey by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crimes indicates that the crop is likely to surge this year. Diplomats say the areas used to grow opium may rise as much as 40 per cent nationwide.
Part of the problem is that officials in Badakhshan and other provinces told farmers they would receive aid in return for not growing, but there is limited capacity to deliver.
USAID pledged $60m (€49m, £34m) to alternative livelihood projects in Badakhshan in the five years from 2005, but only $4.2m was distributed last year. Western diplomats say that because Badakhshan is so underdeveloped and remote, any aid money is spread thinly and may not be immediately noticeable in the first year of implementation.
For ordinary farmers, many of whom have had to sell their land and animals to repay debts to drug dealers who lend money using the next year's harvest as collateral, promises of future aid are now of little help.
Abdul Jabar Mosadeq, the district governor of Argu, an impoverished area that is the centre of Badakhshan's heroin processing, said local officials were struggling to contain public anger.
"It would have been far better if we had promised nothing and simply told villagers that growing opium is against the law," he said.*A UK Ministry of Defence briefing document admits that the objectives of the British mission to Afghanistan could take as long as 20 years to complete, writes Jonathan Moules in London.
The revelation that the "end game" is expected to take 15 to 20 years appeared to contrast with recent assurances given to the Commons by John Reid, the defence secretary, that the Afghanistan mission would be completed within three years.
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Citation: Rachel Morarjee. "Afghan officials face public fury as farm aid fails to materialise," Financial Times 20 March 2006.
Original URL: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/92b9c1e4-b7b5-11da-b4c2-0000779e2340.html
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